If a new technology or service hits the market it shouldn’t be accepted without qualification.

Here are my thoughts and reservations not only about Apple Pay but also about electronic payments with smartphones or smart watches in general.

Well, in your everyday life the easiest way to get rid of your -bogus- money is to pay cash. But carrying cash with you is followed by two risks: loss and mugging. Both may also happen to your password.

So there is a need to innovate and make payments secure and fast with something you always carry with you: eyes and fingers.

Admittedly you also carry your belly with you but after intense scientific researches it turned out that the waist circumference isn’t as unique as required.

Apple decided to use the fingerprint as the biometric identifier.

Your fingerprint might be unique but the technique to transform it into bits and later retrieve you as the actor can be buggy according to Murphy’s law.

So, what happens if things don’t go your way?

If you need support the worst case that can happen, a customer’s nightmare, is, that you have more than one partner. Here it’s Apple and your bank. Apple will say that they don’t have access to your data because the transaction isn’t done with real data but with generated tokens. The bank will tell you, that it’s not responsible for the technique and it suggests to contact Apple or, that your Axx processor should be repaired.

And what about the lost money?

It’s way to complicated to explain the strange redemption of John Doe’s or Mr A.N. Onymus’ money. Refunds are announced many times, according to legislation. But it seems that there are some unexpected black holes implemented in laws.

For God’s sake do not invest in any technique except your pillow (only halfway filled but secure). SMSs are winging it’s way to recipients in a jiffy but money still uses the Silk Road on the back of turtles.
Abso-fucking-lutely fuckers, that’s what bankers are when returning money or gaming via Investment Fonds, sorry, ASFs, aka Arrant Scoundrels Fonds.

Btw, did you know that ASF is also the official abbreviation for ‘African swine fever virus’?

Bankers are responsible for the financial crisis, they dashed people’s hopes, force people into poverty, and forward a very special legacy to our children, valuelessness.

So we learn:

Isn’t the law – still not adapted to activities in the Internet – a nicely flexible and bendable thing?

If you are a shopaholic or not don’t use the ultra-modern techniques. Get rid of your money by paying cash or using the old-fashioned credit card. Don’t trust all the involved techniques and transfers of data over thousands of miles via cables, servers, and through the air. They are not qualified to build up confidence.

I’m an Apple fan and trust in what Tim Cook tells us about privacy. But there should be limits because even Tim and his excellent engineers can’t kill all bugs living in Apple’s ecosystem. Some bugs are like bacteria, they are resistant. Some others are doing their job on the way to Maiden or other data centers.

Summary …

New kinds of electronic payment systems are not designed to reduce the costs but to get more personal data and force people to spend money they don’t have.

Why going a long way round? The next level of paying is to do it even without any device, just with your fingertip or your eye.

Rumors are often exciting news for people following the Cupertino-based tech titan. But at the end of the day only facts count.
As the leading industrial nation the USA developed rules for financial reports which are basically overtaken by other countries (even Germany, the country which is well-known for it’s very special and complex legislation not really understood by normal people). The responsible commission in the USA is the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission).
The laws and rules that govern the securities industry not only in the United States but also in all other industrialized countries derive from a simple and straightforward concept:

All investors, whether large institutions or private individuals, should have access to certain basic facts about an investment prior to buying it, and so long as they hold it.

To achieve this, the SEC requires public companies to disclose meaningful financial and other information to the public.

You aren’t an investor?

That doesn’t matter. Apple’s SEC filings are most often a good reading. Many filings are quite long, others without interesting information. So it’s good to know about some nomenclature for your personal information filter.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

Ferdinand Porsche

I couldn’t find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself.

Steve Jobs

A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

What’s your take onMicrosoft’s mobile devices Mr Nadella?

Two platforms account for 99.6% of mobile device usage. The nearest competitor is Microsoft’s Windows 10 for smartphones which managed 0.3%.

To be honest, Windows 10 isn’t a competitor, it’s a vanity project at best.

Microsoft held a commanding position in the US smartphone market, but that period was before the market was disrupted by Apple and Google. Steve Ballmer did not deliver success in the 2nd gen smartphone space, did not capitalise on the early Pocket PC performance and did not prepare Microsoft for the app economy. The desktop OS business, along with enterprise and business software tools continued to deliver financial success.

Admittedly Steve Ballmer was right about one thing…

“developers, developers, developers …”

and ultimately it were the developers who struck the fatal blows that doomed Windows Phone.

With an iPhone or an Android smartphone of today you can easily dive into Microsoft’s world with Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, and Office.

Is that Mr Nadella’s vision?

The operating system is no longer the key to bringing customers on board. The key is getting them into your app store and your cloud.

People are not interested in the OS. They spend their time in using apps.

Again. What’s your take Mr Nadella?

“The enterprise-cloud opportunity is massive – larger than any market we have ever participated in.”

If I understand you right commercial cloud brings the cash and mobile devices remain your vanity project.

Good to know. So we mustn’t wait for further hazy announcements regarding smartphones. All this makes me sad. For me as a user it would be much more exciting to see a third big player in the market of a device category which plays an outstanding role in our lives.

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In July 2014 Apple and IBM announced an exclusive partnership aiming to redefine the way work will get done, address key industry mobility challenges and spark true mobile-led business change.
Now IBM has teamed up with US pharmacy chain CVS Health owning about 7,800 drugstores across the US. The two companies plan to harness vast amounts of patient medical information. Reports say that IBM will use Big Data to manage diabetes and obesity.

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Yes, this is one of the biggest vehicles for change because it raised the bar on handheld social media, on internet in your pocket, and on the spread of digital photography. The ability to make a difference was propagated with the iPhone and the devices that copied it. Did Steve Jobs know he was starting this kind of change? He knew it was transformative. And he built ecosystems like iTunes, the App store, and the iBookstore to make it all work. Without the App Store, we’d all still be in the dark ages of social media. The mobile revolution is here to stay.
Holding the first iPhone was like holding a bit of the future in your hands. It was that far ahead of the pack. Its amazing glass keyboard was met with skepticism from analysts at first, but the public was quick to decide it was just fine for them. A phone that was just a huge glass screen was more than an innovation. It was a revolution.
[…]
Each new iPhone iteration brings remarkable value. Better telephony (3G quickly became 4G and that quickly became LTE), better sensors (accelerometer, GPS, magnetometer, gyrometer, etc.), and better camera, lenses, flashes, and BSI sensors. Bluetooth connectivity makes it work in our cars. Siri makes it work by voice command. Each new feature is so well-integrated that it just feels like it’s been there all along. Now that I have used my iPhone 5S for awhile, I feel like the fingerprint sensor is part of what an iPhone means, now.
This all-in-one device has led to unprecedented spread of pictures. It and its (ahem, copycat) devices supporting Google‘s Android and more recently Microsoft‘s Windows Phone 8 have enabled social media to become ever more present, and influential, in our world.

Basically this is also valid for a well-known sports car, the Porsche 911, designed by F.A. Porsche and first sold in 1964.

Both companies offer high-priced products with an outstanding build-quality, a timeless design, and an extraordinary user experience. Each product iteration can be seen as an innovative step to perfectness.

Feel free to download this map from my Box account.

The alternative file formats have been created with iThoughts for iOS (.ITMZ file format). Compatibility to other tools is limited. The DOCX file format is suggested for those who don’t use a mind mapping tool. The file contains the image as well as a detailed outline of all topics.

The two entrepreneurs as well as the two top designers share similar values, the design philosophies follow the same convictions, and both businesses are built around a few products which are the focus of innovation, the carrier of technology, and the basis for financial success.

Upholding values like

Quality

Design

Durability

Continuity

Innovation

Brand Loyalty

Customer Satisfaction

Customer Relationships

for decades give rise to a cult, a myth.

Mathias Müller, CEO of the Porsche AG, in the Annual Report 2013 …

It has been just about three years since my colleagues on the Executive Board of Management and I developed guide- lines for Porsche management’s business activities. Since then, I have always been clear about the most important point of this “Strategy 2018”: Our mission is to impress our customers with a unique purchase and ownership experience. This includes offering them outstanding products that fully satisfy their requirements for an exclusive sports car.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc, in the SEC filing 2013 …

The Company is committed to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software and services. The Company’s business strategy leverages its unique ability to design and develop its own operating systems, hardware, application software, and services to provide its customers new products and solutions with superior ease-of-use, seamless integration, and innovative design. The Company believes continual investment in research and development, marketing and advertising is critical to the development and sale of innovative products and technologies. As part of its strategy, the Company continues to expand its platform for the discovery and delivery of third-party digital content and applications through the iTunes Store. […]
The Company believes a high-quality buying experience with knowledgeable salespersons who can convey the value of the Company’s products and services greatly enhances its ability to attract and retain customers. Therefore, the Company’s strategy also includes enhancing and expanding its own retail and online stores and its third-party distribution network to effectively reach more customers and provide them with a high-quality sales and post-sales support experience.

Both companies not only offer products but also services. The overwhelming revenue is made with their kernel products, the iPhone/iPad and the 911/Cayenne.

Here are the product line-ups (without all the available variants) of both companies with their main products, founders, actual CEOs, and designers who were/are responsible for the companies’ top sellers.

Feel free to download this map from my Box account.

The alternative file formats have been created with iThoughts for iOS (.ITMZ file format). Compatibility to other tools is limited. The DOCX file format is suggested for those who don’t use a mind mapping tool. The file contains the image as well as a detailed outline of all topics.

Apple Stores with the Genius Bars represent the company’s philosophy of customer relationships. A distinct fanboyism is typical for both brands.

It was Steve Jobs’ saying ‘To purchase is to build relationships’ and here is what Porsche does to keep the brand loyalty.

Today’s customers have high expectations. They expect any company they interact with to give them the a great experience. In order to succeed, organizations need to make sure that they are delivering the best customer care possible, making the experience memorable for customers and enticing them to go back to do business with that firm and recommend it to others. Forward-thinking business leaders are cognizant that the experience they deliver to both customers and prospects will make a difference between a closed sale or a disappointed customer who will never do business with that company again.
The Porsche AG, winner of the Sales Force Effectiveness category in the Gartner & 1to1 Media CRM Excellence Awards 2013 in the EMEA and Asia Pacific region, is a firm believer in the importance of delivering the best customer experience throughout the entire customer journey, starting from the first moment of interaction with the brand. In line with its corporate objective of value-creating growth, the German company wanted to refine its sales process, allowing the brand to interact with customers with relevant and personalized communications over various touchpoints at different points in their purchasing journey.
In order to achieve this objective, in 2010 the company embarked on an ambitious project to optimize the utilization of every sales opportunity and at the same time promote customer care through an improved service quality. This included pairing each customer with a sales contact person who can help and guide the customer throughout the vehicle acquisition process.

Another objective was to reduce the number of unattended sales opportunities, but leverage each customer contact as a way to build a relationship with the client. Porsche developed a global CRM system (rolled out globally in 2011) to bring together customer contacts and information from different channels, allowing the company to carry out the necessary follow-up activities and create personalized interactions tailored to the individual customer’s exact needs.

In 2012, the first full year that the initiative was in operation, the company saw a two-point increase in its purchase satisfaction index while CRM-based sales follow-up activities went up by 70 percent.
Porsche’s results clearly show that customers value organizations that deliver best-in-class service. In a competitive environment, only these organizations will remain successful and be able to beat the competition.

It should be mentioned that neither Google, nor Samsung or any other of Apple’s competitors are engaged in customer relationships on a personal basis. Replace the brand names Google, Samsung, Microsoft, etc by Anonymous Inc. and you get a true definition of your relationship after buying a product. ‘Brand-conscious’ means preferring the low-price product line-ups.

Differences …

Well, it’s hard to imagine the Porsche CEO presenting a new model with jeans and a turtleneck pullover. And there are some quite obvious explanations.

We talk about

products of $1.000 and $100.000,

easy life in sunny California and stiff politeness in rainy Germany,

completely different product line-ups calling for different kinds of presentations

Cooperation …

There is an app for that and it’s obviously running on iOS devices.

Porsche Car ConnectRemote display and control your new Panamera
Starting from model year 2014, Porsche Car Connecl now brings you the ability to remotely access your new Panamera from your iPhone. This requires that your Panamera is equipped with a Porsche Car Connect unit. Depending on your country, your model and the options installed, you will be able e.g. to remotely locate the position of your Panamera, fold exterior mirrors, set timers for charging, read the tire pressure or set a geo and speed fence.
Porsche Car Connect is available for the new Panamera (model year 2014) and requires a Porsche Car Connect unit in your vehicle. The functionality of this app varies depending on your country of residence as well as on the options available in your vehicle.

Environmental initiatives …

Apple as well as Porsche are leading companies regarding environmental initiatives and show us that innovation is not limited to products but also to the process of production and recycling.

If you only want me to make things, make decisions that have a clear ROI, then you should get out of the stock.

At the time the main difference between the two companies is about production.

Porsche cars are engineered and manufactured in Germany whereas the overwhelming part of Apple products are produced in China. Controlling the environmental and labor conditions in foreign countries, particularly in China and developing countries, is a pretty hard task and some principles must be sacrificed.

Let’s see whether Apple’s strategy to bring the production back home and Porsche’s considerations to build cars in China will change the future situation.

Summary …

Creating and leading a brand needs more than just to be a business man.
Important character traits, the right co-workers, a dash of genius, passion, and luck may initiate the development of a business DNA followed by the birth of a brand.

Outstanding personalities, thinkers, team workers, visionaries can create something out of nothing and put a dent in the universe.

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Point.io offers an enterprise Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform (launched on July 16, 2013) and Enterprise Gateway products for specialized enterprise mobile application development. Focused on document management and workflow, the platform is designed to help enterprises embrace BYOD while maintaining control of their content.

Bring your own device (BYOD) means the policy of permitting employees to bring personally owned mobile devices (laptops, tablets, and smart phones) to their workplace, and use those devices to access privileged company information and applications.

Since the Point.io Gateway handles all secure communication across the firewall, a VPN is no longer required. Users have access to more types of remote storages, including behind-the-firewall repositories like SharePoint, FTP, SFTP, Google Drive and Amazon S3.

In addition to its platform launch, Point.io is unveiling two new partnerships. The first is with Stratospherix. The other is with TheHostingPros, which is offering a free Sharepoint site when a Point.io account is setup.

FileBrowser by Stratospherix is one of the top-ten most-downloaded apps in the Utilities section of The App Store. The company has over 600,000 users in 60 countries. FileBrowser is now powered by Point.io and includes all the features of the Point.io platform.

I first take a look on the native app of Point.io because I think it should contain the main features and gives an overview of how the company’s service is intended for.

The native app Point.io …

Starting in July 2013 the version 1.001 of Point.io was offered for iPhone only.
The app is ugly designed but can be used to show how the platform works.

After installing the app on an iPad I recognized some mysterious behaviors:

– available storage sites are different on iPhone and iPad
– access to Dropbox and Box was not possible on the iPhone
– switching from portrait to landscape mode on the iPad mostly doesn’t work
– files on Google Drive cannot be displayed
– file transfer from one storage site to another is not possible

Here is a complete update list from July to October 2013:

Features announced by Point.io:

1 You can see all your storage connections in one place. For example, Point.io provides a combined view of Box and SharePoint and will be adding additional storage locations such as Dropbox and Documentum in the coming weeks.

2 With Point.io, you get access to your documents on any mobile device, from anywhere, regardless of where the document is stored.

3 Share any file with anyone using secure links. Precisely control what any person can do with your files at all times (e.g. print, edit, save).
There is no need to ever send file attachments again.

4 Remove access to any file(s) as soon as they have been used for their intended purpose. Prevent any loss of control over your documents – your files always stay on your network.

5 Ensure control and security over your documents, even when others use their own mobile devices (BYOD).

An interesting application is sending a document not as an attachment but as a secured link.
This feature is new and provided neither by actual file management apps nor by any well-known cloud client apps for Box, iDriveSync, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.

About FileBrowser …

With FileBrowser, the iPad or iPhone becomes a powerful tool for business and private use, allowing users to access content on company file servers, workstations or cloud storage from anywhere. The FileBrowser app is easy to use and allows files to be downloaded, edited and uploaded back to the original location or distributed to other employees, partners or customers. With FileBrowser, users can access their documents from their mobile device and no longer need to take bulky laptops to meetings or out of the office when visiting clients.

Let’s take a look on the universal app FileBrowser by Stratospherix, UK.
FileBrowser is the only file management app with Point.io integration at the time.
The best way to summarize all the features is to visualize them in a mind map.

Feel free to download the complete mind map in the following file formats:

FileBrowser’s integration with the Point.io platform provides real benefits for users. With Point.io, access is simpler than ever before – users need only enter a single username and password to gain access to all their file servers and cloud storage locations.

At the time this announcement is far away from reality. One more time an app was released although it doesn’t meet the basic requirements of users yet. This is definitely the best way to lose favor with customers or to lose customers. A basic rule of app development was ignored: Release when finished.

For private use with an installed version of FileBrowser your file management will look like this if and only if your different cloud accounts are supported by Point.io and, in case of connections to Windows networks, a suitable gateway is installed on the server:

A benefit?
As you can see there is just one Point.io account necessary to access different cloud storages and Windows network drives. Instead of listing your connections in the left navigation window they are now listed on the right side. Not supported accounts have to be configured as usual and will still appear in the left navigation section of FileBrowser.

This image shows the situation without using Point.io but VPN:

A benefit?
Point.io says that a VPN connection is no longer needed. I cannot see any benefit in that because VPN is a well-functioning and developed technique which is secure and totally controlled by yourself. If connecting via Point.io there is an additional security risk with services and tools of Point.io.

Definitely no benefits!
At the time other disadvantages are the incompleteness of services and some mysterious behaviors of FileBrowser on the iPad (no feedback when loading large files) and FileBrowser in general when accessing files on Google Drive (No display, Point.io operation failed, Error retrieving file info, Folder not found).

So the only remaining benefits are:

Supported cloud storages on multiple devices require just one configuration for Point.io.
Access to Point.io then enables access to all storages configured on Point.io.

What should be mentioned is that FileBrowser is still a powerful app with a perfect UI.
Stratospherix would be well-advised not to move Point.io integration into the foreground as they did when releasing version 2.9.1 on July 18, 2013.